Bryan Stevenson is the founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, fighting poverty and challenging racial discrimination in the criminal justice system.
Why you should listen
Bryan Stevenson is a public interest lawyer who has dedicated his career to helping the poor, the incarcerated and the condemned. He's the founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), an Alabama-based group that has won major legal challenges eliminating excessive and unfair sentencing, exonerating innocent prisoners on death row, confronting abuse of the incarcerated and the mentally ill, and aiding children prosecuted as adults.
In 2012, EJI won an historic ruling in the US Supreme Court holding that mandatory life-without-parole sentences for all children 17 or younger are unconstitutional. Stevenson's work fighting poverty and challenging racial discrimination in the criminal justice system has won him numerous awards. He is a graduate of the Harvard Law School and the Harvard School of Government, and he has been awarded 14 honorary doctorate degrees. Stevenson is the author of Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption.
Bryan Stevenson’s TED Talks
More news and ideas from Bryan Stevenson
Live from TED2020
Ways of seeing: Notes from Session 3 of TED2020
June 4, 2020
Session 3 of TED2020, hosted by TED’s head of curation Helen Walters and writer, activist and comedian Baratunde Thurston, was a night of something different — a night of camaraderie, cleverness and, as Baratunde put it, “a night of just some dope content.” Below, a recap of the night’s talks and performances. In a heartfelt […]
Continue readingArts + Design
“This is sacred ground”: a visit to the lynching memorial in Alabama
May 4, 2018
Architect John Cary traveled to Montgomery, Alabama, for the opening of the National Memorial to Peace & Justice, which recognizes the estimated 4,300 lynchings that have occurred in this country. He shares his impressions of the powerful monument to racial violence.
Continue readingWe humans
This is the conversation about race that we need to have now
August 17, 2017
The great evil of American slavery wasn’t involuntary servitude, says public-interest lawyer Bryan Stevenson. It was the ideology of white supremacy used to justify it -- and it’s an ugly part of our history we need to acknowledge.
Continue reading